"It's Monday. We'll find one." He did not want to start looking just yet, though. Not taking his eyes from hers, he said, "I love you."
"I love you too."
They spent the night at the Sea Crest Lodge, a small hotel a block from the beach. The next morning they woke late because they had made love most of the night and missed the early boat. They had to take the helicopter again.
It was almost ten by the time they made it to the county hospital. Stepanovich parked in Gloria's spot in the employee parking area and walked in with her because he needed to use the telephone.
Having phoned Black and Arredondo from the nurses' station in Gloria's ward, a thought occurred to him. "I'd like to look at the medical records on Primitivo Estrada," he said after she came out of the nurses' lounge wearing her uniform. "The one who was shot at the church."
"I can get fired for giving out medical records," she whispered.
"I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important."
Her eyes focused on the filing cabinet in the corner. "Someone could walk in here any minute."
"Fordyce is dead. I need this."
"Go ahead, I guess," Gloria said mournfully.
A tall nurse with stringy blond hair stepped into the nurses' station. "Gloria, we need you in 301."
Stepanovich waited for Gloria to leave the room with the other woman and listened to the retreating footsteps down the hallway. He stepped from behind the counter and looked both ways. The hallway was empty. He advanced to the file cabinet and began pulling open drawers. The third drawer was filled with thick manila folders indexed with plastic tags with names and file numbers. One of the tags was marked: "ESTRADA, PRIMITIVO." He opened the file, flipping through pages of scribbled doctors reports until he found the patient information sheet. Estrada's home address was listed in the upper left hand corner: 442 E. Ortega Street.
Stepanovich grabbed a ballpoint pen from the desk and copied the address onto a note tablet. He tore off the sheet of paper and shoved it in his pocket, then closed the file and replaced it exactly where he'd found it in the drawer.
In the hospital parking lot, he climbed into his sedan and drove directly to Ortega Street. Cruising at a moderate speed so as not to draw attention in the gang neighborhood, he eyed the bungalow where Payaso lived. Like the other rundown homes on the block, the tiny one story structure was situated on a narrow lot with a patch of lawn in front. Like a seedy dollhouse, a couple of steps led to a tiny front porch supported by two wooden columns. Sitting in a chair on the front porch was a dumpy, heavily made-up Mexican woman whose hair hung to her waist. Stepanovich estimated her age at forty.
Rather than make another pass down the street and risk drawing the woman’s attention, he made a left turn at the end of the block and drove away.
A few minutes later, Stepanovich steered into the well-lit Hollenbeck Station parking lot and pulled up beside Arredondo and Black, who, puffy-eyed from lack of sleep, were leaning against the side of a patrol car sipping coffee from vending machine cups.
"Payaso lives at 442 East Ortega Street," he said climbing out of the sedan.
Arredondo blew steam from his cup. "Right in the heart of White Fence territory."
"I made a pass by. There was a woman sitting on the porch."
"If we arrest him there, the whole neighborhood will know he's down," Black said, slurping the hot brew loudly.
"There's no case unless we get him to confess and give us the names of the shooters," Stepanovich said.
"Payaso's not a talker," Black said. "He's solid. He'll just sit there and hold his shit."
"Then I'll beat it out of him," Arredondo said.
"He'll take the beating, but he still won't hand up his homeboys. A dumb son of a bitch, but tough. He's a man."
Exasperated. Arredondo let out his breath angrily. He turned to Black. "You sound like a friend of his."
Black's mouth formed a sour smile. "I don't have any Mexican friends, compadre. "
As they stood there glaring at each other, Stepanovich stepped between them.
"Look," he said, "I know we're all tired, but there's just the three of us carrying the weight. Let's forget the bullshit until we find out who killed Fordyce."
The two stopped glaring. Stepanovich went to the sedan and reached in the open clipboard and pencil lying on the front seat. Then he began to sketch a rough diagram of the four hundred block of Ortega Street.
****
SEVENTEEN
The lights in Smokey Salazar's crowded apartment were low and a cassette player resting on a card table in the bare living room was playing Puppet's favorite tune: "Earth Angel." Payaso could tell that the party might last through the night because though it had been going for only an hour or so, the homeboys had already gone through a case of Budweiser.
Though they all knew what happened because they'd all been in the car, he, Loco, Gordo, and Lyncho were huddled in a corner, listening to Smokey's version of what had happened. Retelling the details from the respective points of view of the shooters was a ritual Payaso was used to. There was always such repetitive conversation at a party after a "ride." Finally Smokey completed his account.
With this break in the conversation, Payaso, who'd been the driver during the ride, took a final acrid, tongue-burning drag from the joint he'd been smoking. He sucked in enough confidence to begin his version. "I was doing some heavy wheeling," he said, feeling secure in the homey atmosphere. "And when we got hit, the first thing I was thinking was 'I hope they didn't hit the gas tank,'" he said, though in reality he had been too frightened to be cognizant of such details when it was happening.
"We're gonna call you Speedy Gonzales," Gordo said, slapping him on the back, and the others laughed.
"Speedy Gonzales," Lyncho echoed. "Payaso is the Speedy Gonzales of White Fence."
Payaso smiled and shrugged. With the help of the marijuana, he easily imagined the Saturday morning cartoon character Speedy Gonzales: a long nosed mouse wearing a sombrero and a serape. Good 'ol Speedy was only a mouse, but he was loved without qualification by both adults and children. Speedy was accepted by all for what he was. Payaso had never missed the Speedy show as a child. In fact, though hesitant to admit it even to his homeboys, he still watched the show regularly.
Holding the diminished roach with his fingertips, Payaso took a final puff and held the burning smoke in his lungs. He grabbed a cold can of beer from the case on the coffee table and popped a top. Throwing his head back, he gulped from the can until it was empty. As the effects of the roach and the chaser consumed him, he ascended to a state of utter relaxation.
As Lyncho began to tell the story of the shooting from his point of view, Payaso came to his feet and shuffled to the cassette player. The door to the tiny kitchen was open and the homegirls, Sleepy, Flaca, Sad Eyes, and Smokey's bride, Parrot, were sitting around a Formica top table preparing tamales, laughing, and chatting in English and Spanish. All of them, even Parrot, were wearing tight fitting blouses and pants.
Though Payaso knew Smokey would kill him if he ever said so, Parrot, with her skinny bird legs and bloated torso, looked like a pony keg on stilts. As usual, she was talking about what women always talked about in fact, the only thing they ever seemed to talk about men.
"Except for the days he was in the hospital, Smokey hasn't left me alone since the day we got married," Parrot said. "I tell him, hey gimme a break, cabron. I'm sore down there. But that don't mean nothing to him. When he wants it he wants it. I mean like right there on the floor in front of the television. I got rug bums." The women laughed.
Perhaps, Payaso decided, all women were capable of talking about was men. But it was different because they avoided talking about men graphically as men talked about women. Instead of saying "fuck," they always said "we were doing it" or "he was down there" or he wanted "some."
"He always wants it," Parrot said reproachfully.
Payaso turned to the window. Below, the well-lit courtyard of the housing
project was deserted because everyone suspected the cops would be on the warpath after the shooting. Feeling momentarily overpowered by the combined effects of smoke and booze, he grasped the windowsill with both hands to steady himself. Across the courtyard, past some littered clotheslines, a primitive mural covered the side of the apartment building: a smiling, purple robed Madonna riding in a customized Chevy convertible. Come to think of it, the Chevy, right down to the moon hubcaps and pinstriping, looked like the one he owned.
At that moment the cassette player made a clicking sound and "Earth Angel" began to play again. Though for the life of him he'd never been able to memorize the words, he found himself swaying softly to the beat. "Earth angel, Earth angel, will you be mine? My darling dear, love you all the time. I'm just a fool. A fool in love with you." Feeling an urge to get even higher, Payaso considered popping some reds, then suddenly remembered he'd taken the few remaining pills he had left shortly before making the cruise to Hazard Park to shoot the cops.
Hell, maybe he'd run down to the store for a can of spray paint.
Sleepy came out of the kitchen. Payaso had always been attracted to her big, healthy tits, black lipstick, heavy eye makeup, and long black hair ratted high. And he knew the feeling was mutual because since he'd been shot, she'd been hanging around him a lot. She'd accompanied Smokey and the others to visit him in his hospital room, and Payaso remembered the way she had sat on the edge of the bed and took his hand, allowing it to brush against her chi chis as they chatted. As a matter of fact, he'd been more than thankful neither she nor the others had noticed his hard on bulging under the sheet.
"Are you hungry?" Sleepy said, flexing tit. Though high, Payaso noticed the others in the kitchen had stopped talking to eavesdrop.
"I never eat when I'm getting high," Payaso said, maintaining a stern macho expression.
"You should eat something. You lost weight in the hospital."
"Getting shot is nothing," he said in heavy barrio dialect. "I mean, it's like shit to me."
"Smokey said you were the driver two nights ago."
He nodded. "The pigs went down into the dirt. We rode on the pigs."
Avoiding eye contact, she sidled next to him. As he stood there, looking down at the courtyard and feeling high as a motherfucker, Payaso felt her hesitantly place her arm around his waist.
"'Earth Angel' is your favorite song, isn't it?" she said.
"How did you know?"
"Because you been playing it so many times, homey," she said, taking his hand and placing it on her shoulder as to dance. He stopped himself from refusing, as he usually did because he considered himself clumsy. Instead he began to move slowly with the beat. Her tits, restricted in a tight black brassiere he detected easily under her sheer blouse, were close against him and his hands dropped low to hold her ample but firm waist. As they danced, almost as an invocation, he repeated the words of the song: "I fell for you. And I knew the vision of your love's loveliness. I hope and I pray, that someday I'll be the vision of your happiness." He imagined Sleepy as his ruka, sitting next to him in his Chevy, riding low, riding in fine style with just his fingertips guiding the steering wheel, cruising smoothly, with only green lights all the way down Whittier Boulevard and out of the barrio and down to the Pacific Ocean. At the end of the song he continued to stand there holding her, and she didn't try to move away.
As the homeboys continued to guzzle beer and the women en masse wandered hesitantly into the room and begged them to dance, he lit another joint and offered it to Sleepy. She cupped her hands around the joint and took a puff, then handed it back to him. He felt his cock growing between his legs.
Later, at her insistence, she fixed a plate of tamales for him.
By three, when the party was starting to break up, he took Sleepy's hand and led her down the stairs to his car, parked on the street in an unlighted spot.
In the backseat they necked for a while and he reached inside her blouse to massage her breasts. As her nipples hardened and she began to breathe harder, a momentary fear passed through his mind that because of the mixture of booze and dope, he might not be able to get a full hard on. As though she were reading his mind, her hands slipped between his legs and unzipped his trousers. His cock was out and she was stroking him gently. By the time the windows were steamed over, he was as rigid as a steel bar and Sleepy was moaning with desire.
Suddenly straightening her legs, she arched her back. Reaching behind her, she unzipped her tight fitting leather pants and yanked them and her bikini panties down and off. He lifted her onto him and felt her warm, slippery wetness. She moaned fiercely. Then Payaso was in her and the car began to rock with the rhythm of sex.
"Fuck me, homes," she said. "Fuck me. Fuck me. Give it to me. Come in me. I want you to come in me." Payaso, his clumsy feet planted firmly on the floorboard for leverage, coiled powerfully into her.
Afterward, with the windows steamy and the interior of the car smelling of sex, they necked for a while. Then she told him she had to get home because she was only sixteen and every time she got home late her father always kicked the shit out of her.
They dressed and climbed into the front seat. Payaso sat low in his Chevy and Sleepy sat close to him on the way to her home. When he pulled up in front of the house, they kissed and he felt her hand caress him between the legs. "I love you, homes," she said.
"I want you to be my woman."
"I am your woman, homes," she said, kissing him.
"If you get pregnant from tonight I'll get married to you."
She put her head on his shoulder and hugged him tightly. Then the lights came on in her house and she sat up. She slid across the seat, climbed out, and hurried toward the house. Her tits jiggled as she waved at him.
He waved back.
During the short drive home he relived being in the back seat with her and felt his cock coming to life again. It felt good to have his own woman.
Payaso turned into the dirt alley leading behind the houses on Ortega Street and crunched slowly down a gravel driveway to a space next to a dilapidated garage where he always parked his car. He turned off the engine, pulled the door handle, and stepped out of the car.
Suddenly someone grabbed him from behind. His neck was in the crook of an arm and he was being choked. He tried to scream, but nothing came out. He kicked frantically as he was pulled backward toward the driveway.
"Keep your mouth shut, motherfucker," Stepanovich hissed into Payaso's ear, pulling him backward in a secure chokehold.
A police sedan driven by Black sped down the driveway and skidded on the gravel to a stop. The passenger door flew open and Arredondo jumped out.
Stepanovich lifted his knee sharply into the small of Payaso's back, dropping him to his knees. As Stepanovich continued to choke, Arredondo twisted his arm into a hammerlock and ratcheted handcuffs onto his wrists.
Rapidly Stepanovich and Arredondo dragged Payaso, still kicking, the last few feet to the car. As Arredondo opened the door, Stepanovich pulled Payaso inside. Arredondo slammed the door and climbed quickly in the front seat. Black slammed the car into gear and sped down the driveway and into the street.
Stepanovich released his hold and Payaso gasped for air.
"I didn't do nothing," he said.
Neither Stepanovich nor the others said a word. Stepanovich felt his heart pounding, and he was slightly out of breath.
"Where are we going?"
Black turned the corner onto Soto Street. Because of the hour, the road was deserted. Two blocks away at the freeway, he entered the onramp and accelerated into the stream of traffic.
Stepanovich could feel a slight vibration on the car seat. It was Payaso shaking with fear.
"Am I under arrest?"
A minute or so later, Black swerved off the freeway at the Vignes Street exit and entered an industrial area that, because of the hour and the poor street lighting, appeared cavernous. Turning frequently, he wound past the shadows of a brewery, a soap plant,
and some huddled industrial warehouses. Finally turning off the headlights, he steered slowly along a dirt road leading to a wide cement border stretching along the edge of the Los Angeles River. The car lurched slightly as the front wheels bumped slowly over the edge and hummed down a steep cement bank. Stepanovich remembered having driven over the edge on his bicycle as a child. There was a lurch as it reached the flat cement bed of the river, which was the color of blued steel in the moonlight. There was only the sound of tires rolling on the waterless plain as Black continued to the middle of the riverbed.
Then the car stopped.
Black opened the car door and pulled Payaso out and away from the car. Arredondo followed and grabbed Payaso's arms roughly. He unlocked and removed the handcuffs.
Stepanovich stepped out of the car. "How did you know we were set up at Hazard Park?" he said, hearing his voice echoing along the man made riverbed.
Payaso, his complexion a metallic bronze in the dimness, returned his glare.
Black moved closer to him. "Who told you we were going to be there?"
Payaso, realizing he was within punching distance of the three men, cringed visibly. "I don't know nothing," he said, his voice cracking.
Stepanovich stepped closer. "You knew we were set up at Hazard Park, and you and your homeboys rode on us," he said calmly, in his best cop out and save-yourself fatherly tone. "There's nothing anyone can do to change that. But right now, it's time to do the right thing. It's time to help Payaso."
"I didn't shoot nobody," Payaso said.
"A policeman was killed," Stepanovich said. "You know we aren't just going home without finding out who the shooters are."
"I don't know nothing about no drive by. I don't know nothing about no ride."
"We're all alone here tonight," Stepanovich said as a come on. "Your homeboys never have to know what you tell us."
"I ain't gonna tell you pigs nothing. I ain't no rata.
"You're alone, ese," Arredondo said. "There are no homeboys to protect you."
"You ain't got shit on me."
Earth Angels Page 17
